When is incorrect pronoun usage likely to offend people based on gender? [closed]

Question

At this point it is pretty well known that the recent issues are related to changes in the CoC regarding the use of pronouns. While the new Code of Conduct won't be available until the 10th of October, the current Code of Conduct says

No bigotry. We don’t tolerate any language likely to offend or alienate people based on race, gender, sexual orientation, or religion — and those are just a few examples. When in doubt, just don’t.

What I am curious about is which, if any, of the following scenarios would be likely to offend or alienate people based on gender (and why)

1. A long time user states in her profile that her pronoun is "she". A new user leaves a comment using "he".

2. A long time user states in her profile that her pronoun is "she". Another long time user repeatedly refers to this user as "he" even after being repeatedly corrected.

3. A long time user states in her profile that her pronoun is "she". Another long time user (userB) refers to this user as "he" and upon being corrected, this user apologizes and says that as a non-native speaker, pronouns cause him difficulty.

4. A long time user states in zir profile that zir pronoun is "ze". Another long time user repeatedly refers to this user as "he" even after being repeatedly corrected.

5. A long time user states in zir profile that zir pronoun is "ze". Another long time user (userB) refers to this user as "he" and upon being corrected, userB claims "ze" is incorrect according to his religious beliefs and that he (userB) will not use it, but to avoid misgendering users he will only use user names from now on for all users regardless of pronouns.

6. A long time user states in zir profile that zir pronoun is "ze". Another long time user (userB) refers to this user as "he" and upon being corrected, userB claims "ze" is incorrect according to his religious beliefs and that he (userB) will not use it, but to avoid misgendering users with a pronoun of "ze", he will only use user names for users with a pronoun of "ze".

7. A long time user states in zir profile that zir pronoun is "ze". Another long time user (userB) refers to this user as "he" and upon being corrected userB claims "ze" is incorrect according to his religious beliefs and that he (userB) will not use it, but to avoid misgendering users with a pronoun of "ze", he will disengage and not respond to comments or provide answers to users with a pronoun of "ze".

8. A long time user states in their profile that their pronoun is "they". Another long time user repeatedly refers to this user as "he" even after being repeatedly corrected.

9. A long time user states in their profile that their pronoun is "they". Another long time user (userB) refers to this user as "he" and upon being corrected userB claims the singular they is not grammatically correct and that he (userB) will not use it, but to avoid misgendering users with a pronoun of "they", he will only use user names for users with a pronoun of "they".

10. A long time user states in their profile that their pronoun is "they". Another long time user (userB) refers to this user as "he" and upon being corrected userB claims the singular they is not grammatically correct and that he (userB) will not use it, but to avoid misgendering users with a pronoun of "they", he will disengage and not respond to comments or provide answers to users with a pronoun of "they".

Answer 1

I go by the pronoun ‘they’. Here's the gist of how it works:

Pronouns serve a function similar to names and titles; they are personal like names, and they carry social associations with them like titles. Let's see how these can all be used disrespectfully:

• If I tell you my name is ‘Iñigo Montoya’ and you make a habit of calling me ‘that brat I taught a lesson to all those years ago’, that's not cool.

• If you tell me your pronoun is ‘he’ and I make a habit of calling you ‘she’, that's not cool. By doing that I may be verbally emasculating you and treating you as an effeminate ‘sissy boy’ or implying some other negative connotations about feminine gender roles—which by your pronoun you are clearly not subscribing to.

  Conversely, if you're a ‘she’ and I call you ‘he’, I may be verbally suggesting you're too ‘bossy’ or gruff or emotionally incompetent or any of various other negative connotations about masculine gender roles.

  Why negative connotations and not positive connotations? If I'm deliberately using the pronoun you asked people not to use, it's not because I'm demonstrating respect for you.

• If I'm an attorney in a U.S. court of law, and I keep addressing Judge Amy Berman Jackson by saying ‘But Amy, dude, my client is innocent!’ instead of ‘Your Honor, my client is innocent!’, she's not going to be impressed. She'll be even less impressed if she pokes her head into another courtroom and sees you addressing the judges who present as male with ‘Your Honor’.

  In fact, while not technically wrong in a broader sense, it is even disrespectful to address her as ‘Judge’ instead of ‘Your Honor’ in U.S. federal court, and this can be exploited to send judges into fits of apoplexy.

• If you go out of your way to categorically object to using pronouns for a certain class of people because you think the way they present themselves in society doesn't match what you think their chromosomes or genitalia are, then:

  1. That's really weird, dude. We're on a forum of pseudonymous strangers on the internet and you're worried about my DNA makeup or thinking about my genitals every time you talk about me?

     (FOR THE RECORD: As a vulture, I have a cloaca.)

  2. That's not cool.

• If you go out of your way to invent a grammatical rule prohibiting singular ‘they’ (but invariably still allowing singular ‘you’) despite seven centuries of consistent use of the word for singular and plural antecedents since it was introduced into the language—and if you do that just so you can refuse to use my pronoun when referring to me, I have to wonder: wat?

  • I'm also really tired of that debate no matter how many times you've shared a good smirk among your cis friends over a cocktail about your superior command of English prescriptivism to shut down those social justice warriors trying to regulate your use of language…which you're going do by inventing grammatical rules to regulate our use of language.

I get that English may not be your first language and you may make mistakes with English pronouns. That's cool; I'm happy to help you learn, because I'm here on a Q&A site to exchange ideas and communicate—I'm not here to trip you up. I understand it's different in every language;* it's no big deal if you slip up with English—I might make gaffes in other languages too.

I get that you may not know my pronoun when all you see is my name Squeamish Ossifrage. That's cool; I'm happy to let you know, and it's no big deal if you slip up without knowing.

That said, I don't think it's helpful to litigate in advance what the answer to every abstracted scenario is going to be, and I don't think it would be helpful to enshrine that pre-litigation in a code of conduct. You're giving the impression to everyone I may have to deal with now that there's a complicated system of arbitrary rules they will have to memorize and follow (which, in a certain sense, is true anyway, because that's the nature of human interaction, but this isn't making it easier for anyone). I don't know what the updated code of conduct will say, but I hope it doesn't look like your list of abstracted scenarios together with rulings by the court of meta.se opinion.

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_{* Some languages like Old English have grammatical gender that carries very little in the way of social implications, with a neuter word wif for woman, a feminine word wiht for any creature including a person, and a masculine word mann for person of any sex or social role. Some languages like Thai have what are to English speakers—and even to European languages like French and Spanish—very complicated systems of formality and familiarity that make pronoun avoidance obligatory in certain scenarios for tactful conversation. Some languages distinguish pronouns by spatial position instead of social role.}

Answer 2

To directly answer the question, it's complicated and there is a growing body of active research related to this question. A 2019 article, found with a very quick Google Scholar search, concluded:

Those who advocate greater use of gender-neutral and non-binary language should note that resistance to personal pronouns other than ‘he/him’ and ‘she/her’ appear to be driven not simply by grammatical prescriptivism, but also by more conservative and binary gender role attitudes. Given the divergence between generic and specific use of singular ‘they’, greater acceptance of such language is not driven just by a greater willingness to ignore grammatical conventions. Future research in this area should focus on clarifying the relationship between presciptivist attitudes, personality, and gender ideology, as well as the degree to which speakers attribute their grammatical judgements to these factors. Greater awareness of these factors may inform the strategies adopted by those wishing to influence linguistic style in public and scholarly venues.

Bradley, E. D. (2019). Personality, prescriptivism, and pronouns. English Today. doi:10.1017/S0266078419000063 (PDF)

In short, simply enumerating a list of options is unlikely to give any insight into the problem.

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To comment on the structure of the question itself: the list of options is structured a bit more like a push poll than a research instrument. Furthermore, the way it is written is going to lead to respondent fatigue and invalid conclusions since the respondent may end up annoyed at you for asking questions this way (i.e., wall of text, phrasing assumes familiarity with subject, etc.), which will bias their responses. However, this is a really interesting research question; but a survey instrument to examine it will take a lot of work to get right.

Answer 3

Here's a simple take (which, if I gather correctly, was what Monica got fired but hey I can't be fired): this is a Q&A site which doesn't need pronouns. The only time I feel I need to refer to a person is when I want to specify which answer (or comment) I am reacting to and then I can say "while the answer by @chx(link) is correct, it missed a few points..." and there we go. This entire issue can be sidestepped this easily.

To ratchet it up, not much would be lost if we were to remove the username and profile pic from the answers (which "community wiki" actually does) but keep the karma and badges as a sort of "quality stamp" and perhaps link to the user profile page so that an interesting answer can be followed to other answers.

Answer 4

It seems straightforward to use the singular they as the preliminary choice for every user here.

If using the singular they as the preliminary choice, then I think it is important that it is not used as the preliminary choice for only some people (thereby treating them differently to others).

Since Stack Exchange is focused on content rather than authors I think making a non-binary preliminary choice is the least likely way to cause offence. In the event that preliminary choice does offend someone, then I am happy to try and adjust my writing for that person once they let me know that they would like me to do so.

Answer 5

Trying not to step too much inside controversy, I'll try to answer from my humble self-identifying gay male standpoint.

A thing to understand the communication as it happens in SE, is that is has nothing to do with verbal exchanges you could have in a day to day basis:

1. Communication happens mostly with strangers
2. Communication is written, hence calculated
3. You usually don't have access to visual or social cues regarding gender and social circle.

Within this context, whenever you use a pronoun, you always deliberately do so, so making sure it is accepted by the person you designate by the pronoun should be your burden. If context is such that you are assumed to know what this user prefers, then any mistake can be considered a deliberate offense.

This may sound harsh and difficult to comply, and mistakes could happen, but the grounding for such consideration is that LGBTQ+ community (as many others) have a long, long story of language being weaponized against them, where deliberate offense with plausible deniability are much more the rule than the exception.

So the answer to

which, if any, of the following scenarios would be likely to offend or alienate people based on gender (and why)

Is that, all of these misusages can be offensive to different degrees. Which is why some people would favor avoiding pronouns.

(Note that proper moderation actions are a different story I'm incompetent with, and even a warning could be too harsh for a simple mistake, but enforcing it as a general rule would promote users to educate each other to avoid mistakes.)

Answer 6

It was suggested in the comments that I should take a stab at answering my own question.

1) A long time user states in her profile that her preferred pronoun is "she". A new user leaves a comment using "he".

I think that this might be unlikely to offend since it is a one-off by someone who likely does not know where to look for a user's pronouns. Regardless of if it is likely to offend, it cannot be considered a violation of the CoC resulting in a warning/suspension because it seems like an honest mistake not intended to be not-nice.

2) A long time user states in her profile that her preferred pronoun is "she". Another long time user repeatedly refers to this user as "he" even after being repeatedly corrected.

4) A long time user states in zir profile that zir preferred pronoun is "ze". Another long time user repeatedly refers to this user as "he" even after being repeatedly corrected.

8) A long time user states in their profile that their preferred pronoun is "they". Another long time user repeatedly refers to this user as "he" even after being repeatedly corrected.

I think these are likely to offend as it happens repeatedly. I also think it should be considered a violation of the CoC because even if they are not intending to hurt the user, they are and they have been "warned".

3) A long time user states in her profile that her preferred pronoun is "she". Another long time user (userB) refers to this user as "he" and upon being corrected, this user apologizes and says that as a non-native speaker, pronouns cause him difficulty.

5) A long time user states in zir profile that zir preferred pronoun is "ze". Another long time user (userB) refers to this user as "he" and upon being corrected, userbB claims "ze" is incorrect according to his religious beliefs and that he (userB) will not use it, but to avoid misgendering users he will only use user names from now on for all users regardless of preferred pronouns.

6) A long time user states in zir profile that zir preferred pronoun is "ze". Another long time user (userB) refers to this user as "he" and upon being corrected, userB claims "ze" is incorrect according to his religious beliefs and that he (userB) will not use it, but to avoid misgendering users with a preferred pronoun of "ze", he will only use user names for users with a preferred pronoun of "ze".

7) A long time user states in zir profile that zir preferred pronoun is "ze". Another long time user (userB) refers to this user as "he" and upon being corrected userB claims "ze" is incorrect according to his religious beliefs and that he (userB) will not use it, but to avoid misgendering users with a preferred pronoun of "ze", he will disengage and not respond to comments or provide answers to users with a preferred pronoun of "ze".

9) A long time user states in their profile that their preferred pronoun is "they". Another long time user (userB) refers to this user as "he" and upon being corrected userB claims the singular they is not grammatically correct and that he (userB) will not use it, but to avoid misgendering users with a preferred pronoun of "they", he will only use user names for users with a preferred pronoun of "they".

10) A long time user states in their profile that their preferred pronoun is "they". Another long time user (userB) refers to this user as "he" and upon being corrected userB claims the singular they is not grammatically correct and that he (userB) will not use it, but to avoid misgendering users with a preferred pronoun of "they", he will disengage and not respond to comments or provide answers to users with a preferred pronoun of "they".

I think these are likely to offend since userB is trying to justify why they cannot treat/consider userA to be like everyone else. I have no idea if they should be considered a violation of the CoC. UserB is not trying to be not-nice and is working to find a compromise.